8. Gil Scott-HeronSmall Talk At 125th And Lenox

When I play this, for me, it’s like a historical and political and a musical journey as well. I try to maybe take that path into my own musical creation and understanding of the things I take in.

Gil Scott-Heron was the father of rap, in league with The Last Poets and before Grandmaster Flash started.

Music should be a journey like that and Gil Scott-Heron falls perfectly into this. Because not only does he make good music to listen, he is also someone that talks about that time, so his music on Small Talk is a historical document and for me, that matters a lot, for people to know what was happening at the time.

This was the live record. It was poetry. Scott-Heron was the first to put out the ancestral call, and that was the beginning of everything that he ever did and hip hop ever did, no matter how complex the beats were.